Canada has long had an abundance of energy, but the country lags when it comes to energy security, according to the head of a Canadian company who recently participated in a NATO summit on clean energy.

“Energy security is a real issue around the world,” David Arkell, president and CEO of 360 Energy said, but “North Americans don’t know it’s an issue.” 

His 30-year-old Ancaster, Ont.-based firm helps companies find ways to control energy costs by reducing consumption or procuring alternate sources of energy.

Arkell was one of three heads of Canadian energy companies who were invited to speak to a NATO clean energy industry summit held this past summer. 

During the event, 24 companies offering innovative solutions for energy management that were selected from NATO’s 32-member countries gave presentations and were invited to apply to become suppliers. The one-day Clean Energy Industry Event was held July 2 at the Luxembourg headquarters of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA).

The NSPA said the NATO alliance must source a reliable energy supply, protect and secure critical energy infrastructure, and minimize and mitigate climate and energy-related vulnerabilities.

“The transition to clean energy, which contributes to the global security of the Alliance by reducing Allies' energy import dependencies and enhancing energy efficiency, has accelerated,” it wrote, in describing the event. “The war in Ukraine, as well as the growing instability in oil and gas producing countries, are amongst the causes of such acceleration.”

Fending off 'bad actors'

Arkell said NATO countries “need to get our act together because climate change is creating a problem for countries and the pending issue of how bad actors can take advantage of countries that don’t have a proper energy infrastructure in place.”

Those bad actors can be individuals, terrorist groups or nations, he adds.

NATO is aiming to deploy smart energy infrastructure in Nordic countries because “there’s a risk there could be bad actors that can come through the Nordic countries into Europe,” Arkell added. 

He notes Europe has become much more actively involved in managing energy than Canada because of its experience during the Ukraine war, in which the natural gas supply to the continent was disrupted. 

Energy security ranges from having multiple forms of energy generation instead of just one, to having solid cybersecurity in place to ensure bad actors can’t disrupt the power supply, he said.

Further constraints on Canada's grid

Arkell said Canada’s electricity grid already can not keep up with the pace of energy demands, which will only increase as artificial intelligence usage grows. The energy transition, led by corporate end-users, is putting pressure on the current energy ecosystem to speed up electrification. 

Companies ranging from auto makers to greenhouse operators have already faced energy constraints.

“Many customers don’t know that, and when they want to grow the business they find, they can’t get the power they need. And they may not get the power for two, three, five years.”

Arkell said large energy users can no longer sit back and use “old school thinking” that energy problems will be solved by someone else. They need to become much more involved in where and how their energy is sourced and how they can use it more efficiently.

Canada has had an abundance of energy "but my message to businesses is 'Don’t sit back.'" The situation in Europe “is going to gradually start happening here and happen faster than people are aware of.”

A world of 'energy ransoms'

Connie Stacey, founder of Edmonton-based Grengine, said the world “is moving into an era where we’re going to see energy ransoms, and not just in warfare scenarios like Ukraine and Russia.”

She was one of the other Canadian energy company leaders invited to speak at the NATO event. Her company creates and manufactures stackable clean energy battery units which can be used in remote and austere environments like the Arctic.

Stacey said Grengine is the only battery company that has cybersecurity built in at the PCB (printed circuit board) level of the battery pack. “Everybody else tends to assume a firewall is going to do the job; we don’t.”

Most of the battery technology people are looking for comes from China, she added.

With domestically manufactured technology, “you know what’s going on. You can’t say that if you’re getting boards from China,” she said, noting there was a lot of discussion at the NATO event about the potential for devices to be hacked remotely.

Stacey said her company’s modular battery systems are well-suited to replace expensive, environmentally unfriendly and frequently unreliable diesel generators in remote and Arctic areas where obtaining energy is a major challenge.

“You can have all sorts of equipment up there but if you can’t power it, you’ve got a problem.”